Count Steve Kerr among those who didn\u2019t expect the Celtics to be championship contenders this season.<\/p>\n
Before Wednesday\u2019s matchup at TD Garden, the Golden State Warriors head coach said he couldn\u2019t believe how impressive Joe Mazzulla\u2019s squad has been after losing a slew of key rotation players last offseason and playing its first 60-plus games without Jayson Tatum.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Celtics sure aren\u2019t used to being an afterthought, and they kind of were before the season with Jayson\u2019s injury and the departures of Kristaps (Porzingis) and Al (Horford),\u201d Kerr said. \u201cWhen we played them a month ago, I was just blown away by how good they were, the spacing, the execution. They just got good shots over and over again.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey played so well together, and that was without Jayson even. I just think the continuity of what they\u2019ve built has carried over so that, even with all the departures, they still know exactly who they are. And now they get Jayson back, of course.\u201d<\/p>\n
Porzingis, who started for Golden State in his first game back in Boston, said the Celtics\u2019 rare turn as underdogs<\/a> benefited them early this season. Kerr agreed.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that time without the expectations really gave them a chance to play some of their younger guys, to kind of lay in the weeds a little bit,\u201d the coach said. \u201cNobody was really talking a whole lot about them, and that\u2019s kind of a nice position to be in if you\u2019re used to being a favorite year after year. It feels to me like they really took advantage of it, developed some of the young guys, really hammered home their expectations for those guys and roles.<\/p>\n \u201cI just thought every guy on that team knew exactly who they were, and so I\u2019m just really, really impressed by the job Joe and Brad (Stevens) have done putting this team together. They\u2019re a real, real favorite, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n The 46-23 Celtics dominated both of their games against the injury-depleted Warriors, winning 121-110 in San Francisco<\/a> last month and 120-99 at home on Wednesday. Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who were reunited when Tatum returned from Achilles surgery<\/a> on March 6, combined for 56 points<\/a> in the latter.<\/p>\n \u201cThey put a lot of stress on you,\u201d Kerr said. \u201cTo me, they\u2019re the best spacing team in the league with all those great isolation players, (Payton) Pritchard included in that. When they start to drive, you really feel it when you play against them live. The guys on the opposite wing feel like they\u2019re at half court. They\u2019ve got multiple guys who can shoot from out there, but so many guys who can put the ball on the floor with obviously Jayson and Jaylen, but Derrick White is a great penetrator, and Pritchard.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re so spaced out, so it\u2019s really a matter of, are you willing to give up shots to certain players? You really have to know personnel. You have to be willing to give up certain shots to certain guys, but other guys, not so much. If you\u2019re not in tune with recognizing personnel and you\u2019re not in the right spot, they\u2019re just going to kill you.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked for his reaction to Kerr\u2019s comments, Brown replied: \u201cYeah, it\u2019s been fun.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, basketball is a team sport, so the strength of the team is what you lead with,\u201d he said after Wednesday\u2019s win. \u201cAnd I think that from the beginning of the season, that\u2019s what I\u2019ve emphasized. And fast-forward to where we\u2019re at now, I feel like we\u2019ve improved at a very fast rate. And that does not happen in the NBA. Does not happen \u2014 a bunch of guys where you just plug and play and expect things to work out. Even though the expectation is high here in Boston, that just simply doesn\u2019t happen in other places.<\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019re very grateful, very blessed for our team to be able to be in the position we\u2019re in now, and we\u2019ve still got a lot of growth to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Count Steve Kerr among those who didn\u2019t expect the Celtics to be championship contenders this season. Before Wednesday\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3786],"tags":[7,75,81313,479,164,4025,4024,78,77,6,863,85476,255],"class_list":["post-667021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golden-state-warriors","tag-basketball","tag-boston-celtics","tag-celtics-warriors","tag-golden-state","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-goldenstate","tag-goldenstatewarriors","tag-jaylen-brown","tag-jayson-tatum","tag-nba","tag-steve-kerr","tag-steve-kerr-celtics","tag-warriors"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116256347591378477","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}